
- 216 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Minimalism and Affect in American Literature, 1970-2020
About this book
Theorizes the development of a minimalist mode in American fiction since 1970, frequently seen to interrogate US postmodernity. Minimalism and Affect in American Literature, 1970-2020 responds to existing studies of literary minimalism by pursuing three original and interrelated objectives. It provides a more inclusive and precise definition of minimalism that enables further inquiry into the mode. It also exposes the presence of minimalism beyond critical demarcations that attempt to limit the aesthetic to a particular school, medium, movement, form or decade. Finally, it argues that writers of American literary minimalism are uniquely privileged in their ability to formalize precarity and threatening cultural currents into the fragile construct that is ordinary life. Building upon theories of affect and the everyday, Minimalism and Affect in American Literature, 1970-2020 analyses minimalist aesthetics within the works of canonical minimalists alongside writers more frequently associated with other movements. Through readings of Ernest Hemingway, Joan Didion, Raymond Carver, Paul Auster and Don DeLillo, among others, and cultural phenomena ranging from sedation to telephony, this book exposes the persistence and political importance of minimalism within American literature from the 20th century into the 21st.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Halftitle Page
- Dedication Page
- Title Page
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Minimalism and affect
- 1 Origins, contexts, and Ernest Hemingway’s inefficient minimalism
- 2 Sedation and exposure in Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays
- 3 Telephonic tonalities in the stories of Raymond Carver
- 4 Blank spaces: Paul Auster’s environments of erasure
- 5 Orbiting the ordinary in Don DeLillo’s fiction
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- Imprint